


bled into me

by watfordbird33



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F, Minor Silena Beauregard/Charles Beckendorf, POV Second Person, Parental Defiance, Tragedy, legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 20:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11342871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Ares has never forgiven anyone for stomping on his heart, but you think you’d let Silena Beauregard trample all over yours.





	bled into me

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for one swear word, major character death, and a tiny bit of self-hatred/jealousy.

You are thirteen the first time she tells you you’re worth something. It’s a refrain that will become so constant as to be irritating.

You don’t realize how much you miss that--being worth something--until she’s gone.

 

Here are lies you tell yourself, repeatedly: you’re independent, you’re strong, and you’ll never accept charity. They’re lies, but they’re lies that befit a daughter of Ares. You are full of bravado. You are young, and your father is proud.

 

She asks you if you’ve ever thought of leaving.

You don’t lie to her. You don’t know why. She is the infamous prissy princess of camp; the insufferable lipstick-lover of Cabin Ten. She’s against everything you stand for.

You’re at the beach and you’re alone with her. You both escaped, to run. You don’t know when she appeared, but you’re both looking at the sea.

“Every day,” you say. “All the time.”

She says, “Why?”

You don’t have an answer. Once it was because you didn’t belong; didn’t fit with your father’s image; didn’t do what was asked of you. Now, perhaps, you feel like you do too much.

They have a special place in the Underworld, for the guilty ones, your father said. It’s best not to regret. It’s best not to feel.

So you ask her, instead.

“Have you ever thought of leaving?”

“Every day,” she says, and her smile is wry.

 

It’s the year after that she tells you you’re worth something. The beach, again, blistering without sunscreen. She’s next to you. Impeccably tan and clean. You wish, aloud, for her figure, her eyes, her skin. Yesterday Travis Stoll said you looked like a troll in your leggings.

“Don’t be jealous,” she says. And you’re bitter, then, thinking: like you’d know how it feels. “Don’t be jealous, Clarisse. Look at yourself. You’re worth something. You’re worth everything in the world.”

She’s looking at you and she’s smiling, and she’s the one girl you’ve never lied to. The infamous prissy princess of camp; the insufferable lipstick-lover of Cabin Ten. You want to put your hand on her shoulder by her bikini strap and feel how that would feel.

 

That’s the year before Chris, and Beckendorf. 

 

Though the year ends in December, as it always does, you think it’s really over in July, when on the sunburned runaway beach Silena Beauregard kisses you hard enough to make you see stars. It turns out your hand on her shoulder by her bikini strap feels like nothing ever has before.

She says you’re worth everything, and she says it against your lips. It’s your first kiss. You will count it as your last.

 

The following week, Beckendorf asks her out, and the camp forgets their labeling. The prissy princess. The lipstick-lover. Cabin Ten. Instead, she becomes a double entity. Silena-and-Beckendorf. And a constant smile, right over those lipsticked lips you kissed.

You are not angry.

You are not bitter.

You are not jealous.

Such indifference ill befits a daughter of Ares. If your father knew, he would rage. Vengeance comes first.

 

You guess that grief and adoration each come in shifts of weeks, because a week after Beckendorf’s death, you’re at the beach again, and she’s ruining her mascara on your shoulder. You hold her without question. As if a little Aphrodite has seeped into you, too.

(Ares has never held anyone like this.)

Ares has never forgiven anyone for stomping on his heart, but you think you’d let Silena Beauregard trample all over yours.

 

Later, you cry.

You are crying before you’re with Chris and before she takes the chariot and the cabin and leads them into battle. Ares would shriek, if he could see you. He would break you in two. No questions asked and no regrets. He will never belong in the part of the Underworld where they put the guilty ones.

You are crying while she fights.

You are crying while she dies.

Her head is in your lap, and you’re telling her she’s worth something. You’re crying and telling her: love isn’t stupid. Because a little Aphrodite bled into me, Silena. With your lipstick. You left yourself all over me. You put your footprints on my heart.

It costs you nothing, to confess.

But it costs her everything.

 

You love her thoughtlessly, endlessly, guiltily, though she’s a traitor, and vengeance must come first. When you pray to your father, you fall down on your back and you fucking  _ laugh _ . 

Vengeance must come first. 

_ Love.  _ Love must come first.

His rage is tangible from lightyears away.  But no matter, Father. There’s a place in the Underworld just for my kind.


End file.
